President Mark G. Yudof
Mark G. Yudof was named the 19th president of the University of California on March 27, 2008, and took office June 16, 2008. He leads a university system with 10 campuses, five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories, and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program. The UC system has 220,000 students, 180,000 faculty and staff, more than 1.6 million alumni, and an $18 billion annual operating budget.
Yudof served as chancellor of the University of Texas System from August 2002 to May 2008 and as president of the four-campus University of Minnesota from 1997 to 2002. Before that, he was a faculty member and administrator at the University of Texas at Austin for 26 years, serving as dean of the law school from 1984 to 1994 and as the university's executive vice president and provost from 1994 to 1997. His career at UT Austin began in 1971, when he was appointed an assistant professor of law.
While on the UT law faculty, he also was a visiting professor at the law schools at the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley, and conducted research as a visiting fellow at the University of Warwick in England.
Yudof is a distinguished authority on constitutional law, freedom of expression and education law who has written and edited numerous publications on free speech and gender discrimination, including "Educational Policy and the Law." He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute. He served a two-year term on the U.S. Department of Education's Advisory Board of the National Institute for Literacy and has served on the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation.
A Philadelphia native, he earned an LL.B. degree (cum laude) in 1968 from the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned a B.A. degree (cum laude with honors in political science) in 1965. He was awarded the Alumni Award of Merit (2001) and the prestigious James Wilson Award (2004) by the University of Pennsylvania Law School for his many years of service and contributions to the legal community.
His wife, Judy, is the immediate past international president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. She also serves on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council and the international board of Hillel. In 1993, Mark and Judy Yudof were co-recipients of the Jewish National Fund Tree of Life Award. The Yudofs have two grown children - a son, Seth, and a daughter, Samara.